ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

By dunning NATO nations to chip more money into the military alliance, President Trump may inadvertently cause some Europeans to rethink the over-the-top anti-Russian propaganda, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern. By Ray McGovern President Donald Trump’s politically incorrect behavior at the gathering of NATO leaders in Brussels on Thursday could, in its own circuitous way, spotlight an existential threat to the alliance. Yes, that threat is Russia, but not in the customary sense in which Westerners have been taught to fear the Russian bear. It is a Russia too clever to rise to the bait – a Russia patient enough to wait for the Brussels bureaucrats and generals to fall of their own weight, pushed by financial exigencies in many NATO countries. President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump traveled to Brussels, Belgium on Wednesday evening for their fourth stop on their trip abroad. President Trump met with leaders from around the world before the NATO Summit ...

Though many Ukrainians live in poverty, government officials and oligarchs lavish millions on Washington insiders to buy influence, another example of how foreign lobbying can fuel a crisis, Jonathan Marshall reports. By Jonathan Marshall (This is the sixth and final installment of a series on foreign lobbying.) (Updated on May 27, 2017, to clarify language about Rinat Akhmetov in 10th graf.) Donald Trump doesn’t just have a Russia problem, in the eyes of his critics. He also has a big — and related — Ukraine problem. His 2016 campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was  forced to resign  last August amid a flurry of media exposés about Manafort’s lobbying for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia following violent protests against his government in February 2014. “Any presidential candidate should properly vet the backgrounds of and moral decisions of the people he picks to advise him,”  said  Atlantic Council deputy director Alina Poly...

Click to see the full-size image On Saturday, the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) managed to capture the village of Adnaniya, and the road between the villages of Adnaniya and Qahtaniya northeast of the strategic town of Al-Baaj. The PMU also managed to liberate the villages of Rimbus al-Gharbia and Qabusia in northern Al-Baaj after fierce clashes with ISIS militants. In the course of their advance, the PMU killed 13 ISIS fighters, destroyed two VBIEDs and a vehicle armed with a 23mm gun, and captured 7 ISIS vehicles. The PMU found a number of Mortar cannons and a TOW launcher. The engineer teams are working to remove IEDs and mines on the Adnaniya road after capturing it. In Mosul, Iraqi forces advanced in Al-Shifa district, including Mosul Medical City and the Third Mosul Bridge north of Al-Shifa district. The Third Mosul Bridge and the Medical City. Photo: https://twitter.com/iraqi_day/status/868447907820838912 They also managed to capture what remained of t...

“Targeting the Coptic Christians in Egypt is not something new, as a matter of fact it has lately morphed into some kind of a systematic pattern” Bodies lie in the desert after the bus attack on Coptic Christians near Minya in Egypt Report by Dr. Ashraf Ezzat For Veterans Today – Alexandria, Egypt In less than six hours, Egyptian security apparatus has been able to investigate the deadly attack on a bus carrying Christians to a remote monastery in Upper Egypt, identify the perpetrators, and swiftly act in retaliation by striking targets, not inside Egypt, but in Libya. Well, that was a faster reaction than that which was conducted by those sluggish British policemen in Manchester. I think England should dump the American CIA guys (Who took responsibility for Manchester leaks) and instead focus on bolstering intelligence sharing with the (truly professional and relentless) Egyptian security authorities. The Egyptian fighter jets carried out strikes on Friday directed at ca...